Just like the first warm bite into the leg of a three-piece combo, or the smell of a warm biscuit just waiting to be torn into, the Popeyes Bahamas Bowl just feels right.
2016 Bahamas Bowl final score: Old Dominion wins 1st bowl in school history
This game wasn’t very mild.
Old Dominion and Eastern Michigan headed down to the Caribbean and played what was actually a pretty good game. The Monarchs won, 24-20, and according to Mack Brown on the ESPN telecast, ODU is the 19th team in FBS to win 10 games this season.
One thing we learned today is that college football players are just like us.
They have friends who assure them that nothing will go wrong, and that they can totally kick the ball no problem just keep your hand there everything will be fine. In the first half of the game, running back Nick Ferrari-Smith wasn’t buying it. He didn’t take his kicker’s word for it, and let go of the ball while holding it before a kickoff.
Running backs ahead of Ferrari-Smith on the depth chart had themselves a day. Especially Ray Lawry, whose 133 rushing yards paced the Monarchs to over 200 total rushing yards on the day. He made his coach Bobby Wilder a happy camper, and the head man said “this is the best day of my life,” in his ESPN interview after the game. He sure acted like it.
Just another reason why this is our most sacred bowl game.
Yeah, scoot over Rose Bowl. While that may have the pageantry, there’s no way you have the impact on the local psyche that the Bahamas Bowl does.
“From a publicity point of view, it’s been really good for us,” says Tommy Thompson, deputy director general of the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism. “People see the Bahamas as sun, sand, and sea. But there’s much more to the Bahamas than just sun, sand, and sea. This event shows what people from the Bahamas can do when we put our minds to it.”
The Eagles were understandably psyched to get picked for this game, esspecially when considering the weather right around now in Ypsilanti. The Bahamas has a better climate situation than the 30 degree chilly weather the team left behind at home.
But there was more than just sand and surf to be excited about for both teams. Eastern Michigan had not been to a bowl since 1987, and this was only the second time in program history it played in the postseason. For the Eagles, this was a rare season in which things came together.
In only their third year at the FBS level, Old Dominion got to the doorstep of the C-USA championship game and brought a 9-3 record into this game. The Monarchs were picked to finish second to last in their division before the season.
But it is the Monarchs who stand tall at the end of the season. They deserve all the chicken they can eat.
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